White Companies May Still Be Discriminating Against 'Black Sounding' Names

front of a target store
Via Wikimedia Commons
Briona Lamback
August 9, 2022

Naturi Greene had a theory: a job she was applying for was rejecting her application because of one super racist reason.

Her name! Greene shared a video online about getting rejected from Target multiple times over the years. Recently, she applied again, and this time Naturi changed her name to “Tori” and listed her ethnicity as “mixed race” instead of Black. 

Then came the moment of truth.

Greene received an email with an interview offer for the first time. And this isn’t the first time the company has been caught TARGETING our people.

Over twenty years ago, Kalisha White shared a similar suspicion to Greene’s. After being denied by Target, she reapplied as “Sarah Brucker” and landed an interview even though the fake resume had less experience than White’s. 

But this is about more than just one company–it’s about the system of white supremacy itself. They’ve always tried to shame our names and strip us of our identities to force us to assimilate to whiteness, but we should never obey.

Like Greene, often we’ll have to outsmart the system but changing who we are to appease THEM is never the move. Despite how white supremacy tries to erase our identities, we can never compromise who we are.

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